Jury finds against union, awards $5.3 million in damages...

1of 4Hundreds of Houston area janitors and supporters marched down Post Oak Rd. during a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) march and rally that began at Grady Park in the Galleria, Saturday, Oct. 28, 2006. About 4,700 low-wage janitors in Houston have formed a union with SEIU and an additional 600 janitors will soon join in their fight for fair wages and benefits.
(Johnny Hanson for the Houston Chronicle)Photo: Johnny Hanson, Freelance

2of 4Hundreds of Houston area janitors and supporters marched down San Felipe St. during a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) march and rally that began at Grady Park in the Galleria, Saturday, Oct. 28, 2006. About 4,700 low-wage janitors in Houston have formed a union with SEIU and an additional 600 janitors will soon join in their fight for fair wages and benefits.
(Johnny Hanson for the Houston Chronicle)Photo: Johnny Hanson, Freelance

3of 4Janitors, supporters and SEIU members and staff rally in front of One Allen Center, a building members of their union cleans, in advance of a vote for a new contract with the contractors who employ them, Wednesday, May 25, 2016, in Houston. ( Mark Mulligan / Houston Chronicle )Photo: Mark Mulligan, Staff

4of 4The SEIU called the outcome of the case an assault on free speech rights. The trial was the first time the union had to defend its tactics in front of a jury.Photo: Mark Mulligan, Staff

A Harris County jury on Tuesday awarded a Houston commercial cleaning firm $5.3 million in damages, finding that a labor union's aggressive organizing campaign went too far when it maligned the reputation of the company. It opens the door for more employers to sue unions over hardball tactics often used in membership drives and contract disputes.

The jury, by a 10-2 vote, found for Professional Janitorial Service in a suit the company brought nine years ago against the Service Employees International Union, which targeted the company as part of its "Justice for Janitors" organizing campaign and wrongly claimed Professional Janitorial Service had violated wage, overtime and other labor laws.

The case was the first time that a jury has found against a union in a business defamation or disparagement case, according to a search of legal records by the company's law firm, AZA of Houston.

"The jury found what PJS and its employees have known for more than a decade," Brent Southwell, the company's chief executive, said in a statement. "The SEIU is a corrupt organization that is rotten to its core."

Federal labor laws have historically given unions broad free speech rights, but the jury in state district court found that the SEIU recklessly disregarded the truth when it claimed that Professional Janitorial Service forced its employees to work off the books and fired some for their union activities. The Labor Department found no evidence of widespread wage violations and the National Labor Relations Board dismissed the unfair labor chargers, but the union continued to spread the allegations to clients of Professional Janitorial Service to hurt its business, according to evidence and testimony in the case.

The union said it would appeal the verdict. In a statement, the SEIU called the outcome an assault on free speech rights and said the trial was "riddled with procedural errors and blatant appeals to the prejudices of the jury." The union said the company failed to prove the union's statements were "false, defamatory, malicious" or that it suffered economic damages.

"This verdict will not stop working people at PJS or anywhere else from speaking out to win justice," the union said.

The trial, which lasted four weeks, represented the first time the SEIU, which has nearly 2 million members nationwide, has had to defend its tactics in front to a jury. Other cases, including a federal racketeering lawsuit filed by the international food, maintenance and cleaning company Sodexo in 2011, were settled before they ever got before a jury.

The jury of four men and eight women found for the Professional Janitorial Service after less than eight hours of deliberation.

The case stretches back more than a decade, when SEIU launched its "Justice for Janitors" campaign in Houston, organizing workers at the city's five biggest commercial cleaners and negotiating contracts with them. Professional Janitorial Service, the sixth largest, refused to recognize the union without first giving workers a chance to vote in a government-supervised election.

SEIU went on the attack, accusing the company of forcing employees to work off the clock and firing them for union activities and using its connections with politicians and pension funds, which invest in commercial real estate, to steer cleaning contracts away from Professional Janitorial Service, according to court documents.

Union officials celebrated each time a property management firm agreed to drop Professional Janitorial Service, according to emails presented during the case.

Legal and labor specialists said the verdict could force unions to be more circumspect in the allegations and rhetoric the use in organizing campaigns while emboldening companies to sue if they believe unions are making false allegations that cost them business. Companies have long been counseled that there was little they can do if they find themselves unfairly maligned.

"This puts a damper on unions," said Richard Shaw, who recently retired as an official of the Harris County AFL-CIO. "Unions have to be more careful on what they say and how they say it."

Troutman noted that the trial in Houston opened a window to union campaign tactics through a manual, emails and memos and how the union could inflict pressure and pain on businesses by filing charges with regulators, challenging permits, and approaching lenders with damaging information about employers.

"I think it will take a little wind out of their sails," Troutman said of the verdict.

L.M. Sixel writes about the economy and the workplace for the Houston Chronicle. She writes a weekly column called "Working" that appears each Thursday.

She started her newspaper career at the Beaumont Enterprise. Before that, she earned a Bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master's degree in economic history from the London School of Economics.